How Jeremy Corbyn can do a Brexit deal and split the Tories in two
The default position of the Tory leadership on Jeremy Corbyn has long been that he is the most dreadful Marxist, someone fond of hanging around with terrorists, a real rotter who would reduce the British economy to Venezuelan rubble. But that’s so last week. Who cares about precedent now in the mad house of Westminster? All that sticking to your word stuff is out the window.
In the last 24 hours, Corbyn has been transformed into the “go-to” guy for a Tory leader needing a way out of the Brexit farce. Talks between the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition are under way in search of a compromise solution.
Various Tories sympathetic to the leadership’s position (that narrows it down) have explained to me that it is not as bad as it looks. Corbyn is a terrible Marxist, of course, and May has invited him to find the fix, but he will probably screw it up. He won’t do a deal, on the customs union and all that, runs the theory, meaning that May can blame whatever follows on him.
I’m sceptical this will work, because it is based on the assumption that Corbyn will act in the interests of Number 10. Actually, there is a rather clear route for Corbyn to do a deal, to claim victory as the man who delivered a compromise Brexit, and to then stand back and enjoy the Tory party split formalising.
How could he do it? If his advisers are smart they will keep it simple and demand:
1) A Customs Union, with some warm words from the EU. The EU will oblige.
2) Total alignment on the worker-friendly bits of the Single Market.
3) A picture of Corbyn on the steps of Number 10 on his way to deliver his demands to May. No more talks in secret, we go through the front door, can be Labour’s message.
More than 200 Tory MPs will oppose a settlement of this kind. They’ll be stuffed though, with May getting it through with Labour, Tory remainer and perhaps even SNP support if Corbyn dangles a Scottish referendum.
The rickety construction would last just long enough to get a compromise deal through, with assorted bits of legislation, and then Corbyn pulls the plug. He delivered Brexit, and the Tories move to the formal split phase.
Corbyn faces his own obstacles, of course. Large parts of his parliamentary party wants a referendum rerun, or a confirmatory vote as they’re trying to rebrand it. That is tricky for Corbyn to manage but he can say Labour is getting close to power and here is a chance to speed up the process.
Some Labour MPs will splinter to the TIG crowd, but so what? A split Tory party – with a majority of just two, remember – then stumbles into a no confidence vote and by a series of accidents a general election. In such an early contest the TIG crowd face wipeout. They do not have the infrastructure. Labour wins.
Corbyn can present his compromise Brexit as a step over the threshold of power. Theresa May, and the ERG too with its strategic incompetence of historic proportions, has set it up for him. Well done everyone.
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Iain Martin and the team make sense of the news, providing commentary and analysis on the stories that matter in politics, geopolitics, economics and culture.